Walking Birds’ Mountain took place last year over one week. A group of visual artists and writers trekked across the Ballygawley Mountains with archaeological writer and folklorist Pádraig Meehan, explorating Sliabh Dá Eán, the ‘hill of …

Walking Birds’ Mountain took place last year over one week. A group of visual artists and writers trekked across the Ballygawley Mountains with archaeological writer and folklorist Pádraig Meehan, explorating Sliabh Dá Eán, the ‘hill of …

Walking Birds’ Mountain took place last year over one week. A group of visual artists and writers trekked across the Ballygawley Mountains with archaeological writer and folklorist Pádraig Meehan, explorating Sliabh Dá Eán, the ‘hill of …

Walking Birds’ Mountain II Now in its second year, Walking Birds’ Mountain will take place over the course of one week. A group of visual artists and writers will trek across the Ballygawley Mountains with archaeological writer …

Walking Birds’ Mountain took place last year over one week. A group of visual artists and writers trekked across the Ballygawley Mountains with archaeological writer and folklorist Pádraig Meehan, explorating Sliabh Dá Eán, the ‘hill of …

Welcome to Tread Softly

Welcome to the eighth Tread Softly festival, running from 25th July to 3rd August. This year’s programme of events is inspired by the landscape of County Sligo and the myths, stories and people associated with it.

Our highlights this year are Walking Birds’ Mountain II, an exhibition of the second collaboration between 13 visual and literary artists responding to the myths associated with Sliabh Dá Eán on the shores of Lough Gill. A major staged work by the Turkish composer Onur Turkman for the Irish Yurodny Ensemble presented by the Model. The Nine Queens, derived from a line in Yeats’ play On Baile’s Strand; nine sculptors will work with community groups at beaches along the coastline of County Sligo to create a series of sand sculptures representing the daughters of Manannán mac Lír, sea god of Irish mythology. Muldoon’s Picnic, an evening of poetry and prose hosted by poet Paul Muldoon, presented by the Hawk’s Well theatre in association with the Sligo Yeats Society. Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen, the annual invited artists exhibition of small works curated by the Hamilton Gallery. And the launch of the third edition of the literary broadsheet, The Cormorant.

Other features of the programme are To the Waters and the Wild a series of guided walks through the Sligo landscape; The People of the Hollow Hills, a talk on recent findings at Carrowkeel by archaeologists Robert Hensey and Pádraig Meehan; and The Bare Hazel a new Tread Softly arts participation programme including ‘Maugharow is a wilder place’ and ‘The Battle of the Books ‘curated by Sean Golden and Niamh McCabe respectively.

Tread Softly wishes to congratulate the Sligo Yeats Society on the 60th anniversary of the Yeats International Summer School, by whose kind permission their programme is also included in this booklet.

Devised by Sean Golden, writers worked with groups of artists from both professional and community backgrounds from County Sligo to create music and song, written word and spoken, images captured by neighbours of Maugherow and environs responding to the land- and sea- and skyscapes that shape the community.

As part of Tread Softly, the Bare Hazel is a new arts participation project launched with the kind support of Creative Ireland.